Levi’s Stadium, home to the National Football League (NFL) team San Francisco 49ers, is employing a sensor-based screening solution to offer a less obtrusive way for attendees to submit their bags and belongings to security checks. The solution, provided by Qylur Intelligent Systems, also uses Internet of Things technology to better identify the items that pass through the sensor device, and to determine what is of concern and what can be disregarded.
The system, known as the Qylatron Entry Experience Solution, has been installed at Levi’s Stadium for approximately six weeks. To date, says Jim Mercurio, the stadium’s general manager and VP of stadium operations, it has been used for tours and private events. The solution replaces a manual method of inspecting visitors’ bags before they enter.
Levi’s Stadium, located in Santa Clara, is a football stadium with a visitor capacity of 68,500. NFL football games, as well as concerts and other large events, are held at the stadium, while it provides tours to groups on weekdays. In 2016, the venue will be the site of Super Bowl 50.
The stadium, in accordance with NFL security rules, forbids backpacks and other large bags from entering the facility, though it does allow small bags or purses. Any visitor who brings in a purse or bag must open it so that a staff member can visually check it for any unapproved items, such as a weapon or something that could be used as such.
Recently, a group encompassing the stadium’s security, customer service, operations and marketing departments began looking into the Qylur technology as a means of making the screening process simpler, faster and more user-friendly. “We’re always looking to utilize technology to enhance our security applications and game day experience,” Mercurio says. So this past September, the stadium installed a single screening device to test how visitors responded to it, how well it integrated with existing security screening protocols, and whether it reduced customers’ time spent in line, as well as enhanced or improved the experience for users.
The Qylatron is a self-service security-screening device consisting of five pods into which belongings are placed, each opening on two ends, with locking doors at each opening. Every pod includes a bin that can hold a bag up to the size of typical air-flight in-cabin baggage, with a mechanism to the move the bags as needed while they are being scanned. The device also features multiple environmental sensors and can take x-ray images.
As an individual arrives at the stadium with a bag, she can proceed to the Qylatron and hold her ticket before a bar-code scanner in front of an available pod. This option is not necessary to operate the Qylatron, however, so it will work even if the stadium opts against ticket scanning. Once the device scans the guest’s ticket, the software confirms that it is approved for that day and releases the door lock. The individual then places a bag in the pod, shuts the door and walks through a metal detector beside the pods. Once that process is complete, the guest, now located on the other side of the Qylatron, can go to her pod and again present her ticket to the bar-code scanner. The door will then unlock, allowing her to remove her bag.
Yair Dolev, Qylur’s VP of marketing and product management, likens the system to a beehive-style locker system. “You put bags in, walk around the other side and take your bag,” he states.
In the meantime, sensor technology in the Qylatron device captures x-ray information and other details about the bag’s contents (Dolev declines to indicate the types of environmental or other material sensors being used). The device’s software uses the sensor data to determine whether anything suspicious is in the bag. At the same time, personnel can view the screening results on their own video monitors, enabling them to make their own interpretations. The x-ray images and environmental sensor data can be viewed by workers at the site, or at a central command area remotely.
The collective information from the sensors in all of the pods, Dolev says, is what can drive “an ongoing learning cycle” for the system’s software. Because the technology is still new, Levi’s Stadium is the only stadium using the system to date in the United States, though it is also being used at a stadium in Europe. However, Dolev says, as more stadiums adopt the technology, the IOT functionality of capturing and sharing data between machines, using clusters of servers where information is collected and interpreted, will begin to provide further value. Each image and the screening results can be stored, and that data can be analyzed collectively, and algorithms updated to improve the screening process for future scans. QyFuse venue-specific software provides updates to the system based on intelligent machine learning, in order to ensure that every machine is adjusted to meet changing trends in guest bag content and security threats.
For instance, if a new cosmetic becomes popular and is carried by multiple stadium visitors, the system will become familiar with that new product. Thus, it will know not to confuse that item with a weapon that might be of a similar shape or size.
“It’s important to identify [screenings] that are similar,” Dolev says “and create a large network of machines” that recognize those similar screening patterns. The Qylur system, he adds, will create subcategories within the screening data, such as Qylatrons at stadiums as opposed to those in airports or other locations where the items users carry might differ.
The solution can also be designed to recognize forbidden items specific to a location or subcategory. For instance, bottles of liquid are not accepted in airports, but may be approved at other locations.
The system at Levi’s Stadium has worked well so far, Mercurio reports. “We have people going through it all day, every day,” he says, adding that testing will nonetheless continue into 2016. “This isn’t something we want to rush through. We’re looking to see if this could be scalable.” The technology will not be used for a football game or a concert for some time yet, he notes, and only after the Super Bowl will the company begin looking into how the system might be scaled up. It would also require approval from the NFL to be used for football games.
Qylur was founded in Silicon Valley in 2005 to develop software and technology solutions for security screening and other applications. The Qylatron is the firm’s first product. The deployment in Santa Clara is the first long-term use of the technology in a U.S. stadium; however, it has also been installed in other countries, such as at the Curitiba stadium for last year’s World Cup.
Mercurio says he hopes the technology proves to be effective, efficient and scalable, and that it works as expected. “I’m not a fan of using technology for technology’s sake. It has to make sense,” he states. He offers high praise for Qylur: “It’s a pleasure to work with some of the brightest in the [technology] business.”